Romney, Obama score so-so victories

Mitt Romney failed to break 70 percent of the vote in Indiana and North Carolina in his first test as the presumptive GOP nominee, while President Barack Obama nabbed just 63 percent of the vote in West Virginia against a jailed opponent.

Although both Romney and Obama easily won their primaries in the three states that held balloting on Tuesday — Indiana, North Carolina and West Virginia — they were hardly ringing victories for either candidate.

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Romney won the majority of the 142 delegates at stake in the rio of states but is still short of the needed 1,144 delegates to secure the Republican nomination. But he remains far ahead of the rest of the field.

The biggest test for the two men came in North Carolina, where a controversial ban on gay marriage drove voters from both parties to the polls. A historically Republican state that Obama won narrowly in 2008, the Tarheel State will be a tough battleground in the fall election.

With about 60 percent of the precincts reporting, Obama took 80 percent of the Democratic vote in North Carolina. The only other option on the ballot was “no preference.”

Romney, who has been dubbed the presumptive nominee for weeks, got 66 percent of the Republican vote, a sign that conservatives in the state have not fully consolidated behind him.

Romney’s camp has deflected concerns that he will suffer from a lack of enthusiasm among the most conservative Republican voters. But his inability on Tuesday to break 70 percent of the primary vote in North Carolina and Indiana — two states that had reasons to turn out conservatives — will reinforce that argument.

Romney’s former rivals who have dropped out of the race, but were still on the ballot, took almost 20 percent of the Republican vote. Rick Santorum, who endorsed Romney on Monday night, took 11 percent of the North Carolina vote; and Newt Gingrich, who campaign heavily in North Carolina but withdrew from the race last week, received 8 percent of the vote there. Gingrich performed better in North Carolina than he had in some states when he was in the race.